


Dry Bones (the Romantic Valduggery Version, as opposed to the Kinky Dead Men Orgy Party version)

by therealfroggy



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: F/M, First Time, Friends to Lovers, Jealousy, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-24
Updated: 2019-02-24
Packaged: 2019-11-05 04:20:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17911904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/therealfroggy/pseuds/therealfroggy
Summary: Skulduggery keeps catching Valkyrie with other Dead Men, and the green-eyed monster is awakened. But Valkyrie knows exactly what she's doing, and why she wants him to see.*Everyone is alive and nobody is evil because porn, and because I think denial is going to bring things back to early series emotional safety :'( *





	Dry Bones (the Romantic Valduggery Version, as opposed to the Kinky Dead Men Orgy Party version)

**Author's Note:**

> I ended up writing two different but similar versions of this, because I couldn't decide how I wanted the fic to pan out. This is the romantic one. The orgy party one will be posted just a few minutes after this one.

Dry Bones: the Romantic Valduggery Version  
(as opposed to the Kinky Dead Men Orgy Party Version)

 

The first time Skulduggery caught her with a Dead Man, he did not feel shock or disbelief, but a deep sense of being caught off guard. Shouldn't he have seen this coming? He was a detective, after all, and here his partner was... well, she was...

Was there a name for that particular position? Or was this all Saracen's experience and inventiveness coming to the fore? Whatever it was, it was clear to the skeleton that Valkyrie was enjoying it immensely, if her breathy laughter and grasping hands were any indication. The former soldier was bracing himself against the wall by leaning his shoulders back against it, his legs in a wide stance and his body a steep incline. Valkyrie was climbing him like a tree.

Her legs were really remarkably strong. Skulduggery hadn't really noticed before just how much like Tanith his partner was becoming. Lean, muscled and agile, she was using her legs around Saracen's hips to move herself on him, her arms straining above her head as she was holding on to the shadows that linked her grip to the ceiling. She was naked and gloriously lost in what she was doing.

Skulduggery silently turned and went back the way he had come, hoping he hadn't disturbed them. Valkyrie had looked so happy, and Skulduggery really did want her happy. And, of course, Rue's exploits were legendary.

He had better use those exploits to make Valkyrie smile, or Skulduggery would shoot him in the face.

***

The second time Skulduggery walked in on Valkyrie naked and sweating and wrapped around one of his former brothers-in-arms, it was more of a shock. The young woman had usually seemed to Skulduggery like she would prefer to have one romantic partner at a time, and yet, that was clearly Dexter Vex she was riding into the surface of the desk in Gordon's study.

It was barely a fortnight since Skulduggery had seen her with Saracen Rue in a side corridor at a Sanctuary fancy party, and now she was bucking happily on top of Vex at a house party in honour of Gordon Edgely's death day. It seemed rather unlike Valkyrie to let her affections transfer so quickly.

Not to mention, Skulduggery had never imagined she was the type to straddle someone on a desk, both of them fully dressed aside from Valkyrie's panties thrown haphazardly onto the floor. Her short leather skirt was riding up around her waist, and Vex' trousers were pushed down past his hips. Skulduggery imagined Gordon would be appalled, had he not been entertaining in echo form downstairs.

It came as an even bigger shock to the skeleton detective that he found himself deeply resentful that Valkyrie was fully dressed this time. He wanted to see her flesh, her skin. And he wanted to see her smile. If Vex failed to please her, Skulduggery would have to run him over with the Bentley.

Just as Skulduggery was about to leave, Valkyrie's head turned and she looked right at him. He froze. True, the door had been closed, but not locked. Would she be infuriated that he had entered, or only embarrassed that he had seen her? He slowly cocked his head to one side and waited for her reaction.

Valkyrie bit her lip and turned back to Vex, and kept right on with what she was doing, her strong legs once again flexing and shuddering with the strain of moving herself. She curled forwards and moaned, long and loud in the study. Vex responded with a short, deep grunt, and Skulduggery fled the sight of his partner in the throes of what was clearly an orgasm.

Downstairs, Skulduggery roamed the house until he found Saracen Rue, lounging against the kitchen counter with a pint in his hand. Rue was sharing an amusing anecdote with Ghastly, who chuckled, but the chuckle stopped immediately when Skulduggery whipped out his gun and aimed it directly at Saracen's face.

“What did you do to her?” he asked, voice calm despite the residual arousal tearing through him. He hadn't known this body could feel arousal, and yet, there it was.

“Easy now, Pleasant,” Rue said nervously, trying to shift behind Ghastly. “I didn't do nothing! I mean, I did, but only because she asked me to!”

Skulduggery cocked back the hammer on his gun, and Ghastly moved in to put a hand on his arm.

“Skulduggery, what's going on?” the tailor asked, looking between the two men with a frown.

Skulduggery ignored Ghastly and fixed his eyeless stare on Rue. “Did you promise her things you would never be able to give her, Saracen? Is that why she's, shall we say, seeking comfort elsewhere after your dalliance?”

“I never -” Saracen started hotly, then frowned. “What, already? With who?”

Skulduggery strained against Ghastly's hold, but all his strength would not shift the other mage an inch, and so he stepped back. “You hurt her.”

“No, I swear!” Saracen insisted, holding his hands up in a placating manner. “It was all her idea, and I kept asking her if she was sure, and she was, and come on, Pleasant, you're the one who keeps telling us she can fight her own battles, and -”

Skulduggery hesitated, then lowered his gun and put it back in his belt. Saracen let out an audible sigh of relief and took a hasty swallow of beer.

“I'm starting to think I shouldn't be hearing this,” Ghastly muttered to himself. “If I leave now, will you promise not to kill him, Skulduggery?”

“Leave,” the skeleton said. “We're just going to have a little talk.”

Saracen looked even more frightened as Ghastly walked out.

***

The third time it happened, Skulduggery began to suspect all was not well, and that he was going to have to talk to his young partner. It wasn't that he didn't understand how it could happen – Valkyrie was a young and beautiful woman, and though he personally couldn't see it, Skulduggery supposed Anton Shudder would be considered attractive by some – it was that it was all happening so quickly, and with three different mages.

But most of all, he felt the green-eyed monster chew on his bones and breathe life into feelings he thought he had long since lost the ability to feel.

Skulduggery was walking through the Sanctuary when he heard noises. A weak groan, as if from a man in pain, came down the narrow corridor. The detective quietly slid his gun from its holster, then held up a hand to sense the air around him. The corridor was empty, but there were doors ahead, and a few of them stood ajar. He slid down the hall, heading for the first open door.

Then the groan came again, and Skulduggery knew it was the next door across the corridor that held the mystery. He carefully peeked around the door frame, his gun preceding his eye socket, and saw Valkyrie Cain being fucked from behind over a desk.

The room was dingy and dark, and the only furniture remaining in it was the desk and a chair lying on its side on the floor. Anton Shudder, shirt open over his broad shoulders, was standing upright behind Valkyrie, his hips thrusting ceaselessly against hers. Valkyrie, her elbows on the desk and her bottom pushed up high to enable Shudder to get at her in this position, was half-dressed. Her breasts were spilling out of her tunic, which was open down the front, and her black protective trousers were pushed down to mid-thigh.

She looked up and met his empty eyes, and her mouth fell open.

Skulduggery felt his bones burn with jealousy, with hunger, and with rage that she would do this to him. It was no coincidence that he had seen her, he realized; she had known he was there each time, and she had purposefully let him see her being taken by other men in a way he would never be able to take anyone again.

She wanted him to see what he could never have. It stung.

Suddenly foolish in his anger, Skulduggery pocketed the gun and stepped forwards into the room, letting the door slide open until there could be no mistaking who was standing there, watching them. Shudder looked at him like he was seeing a Faceless one. Valkyrie smiled and did something that made Shudder cry out.

“Good afternoon,” the skeleton said smoothly. Shudder looked as though someone had just shot him. Valkyrie smiled even wider, looking at Skulduggery with lust-blown eyes.

“Anton,” Skulduggery said, “I trust you will be understanding and mature when I tell you that Valkyrie and I need to talk. Urgently.”

Shudder made a sound as if someone was stepping on his voice box.

“However, I am a gentleman, and a gentleman does not deprive a lady of her pleasures,” Skulduggery continued, voice calm and dreadful. “I will give you ten minutes, then I will return. Anton, I expect you to keep Valkyrie _very_ happy. If she is, in any way, unhappy with this arrangement, you and I will have words. You understand me?”

Shudder nodded, but his face made it very clear that he understood nothing at the moment.

Skulduggery's head tilted a little to one side, and when he next spoke, there was no room for misunderstandings.

“When I come back, I want to find _you_ gone and _Valkyrie_ wallowing in post-orgasmic bliss. If she is anything less than perfectly satisfied, I will be very cross. Ten minutes.”

Valkyrie bit her lip, clearly holding back a laugh, and looked straight at him. Skulduggery noticed her eyes were dark and wide, her lips red and kiss-bitten, her cheeks flushed. She grinned at him and licked her lips just as he turned to go. As the detective left the room, he heard Anton give a strangled gasp, and he knew Valkyrie was reducing the other mage to incoherency without a single spell.

For the next ten minutes, the skeleton detective stalked the Sanctuary halls and pondered how to react to the open lust he had seen on her face. She was pinned beneath another man, probably still with his cock inside her, and yet she met Skulduggery's eyes with a lustful grin. The detective tried to put that together with her newfound penchant for exhibitionism, and a terrible hope lit inside his empty rib cage.

Perhaps he was not the only one wanting, but holding back.

Still, when he re-entered the disused office at the end of ten minutes, he did so hesitantly. Hope was one thing. Confidence was another beast entirely.

Valkyrie was standing there, tunic barely closed over her lovely assets, her trousers pulled back up but her face still flushed and her hair in wild disarray. She straightened up as Skulduggery entered, drawing her shoulders back, and the detective knew she was preparing for verbal battle. The knowledge warmed him.

“Do I have your attention yet?” Valkyrie challenged.

“You have an odd way of going about getting a man to notice you,” he replied, closing the door behind him. “Unless, of course, it was Rue, Vex and Shudder's attentions you were after to begin with.”

“You know it wasn't,” Valkyrie said dismissively. “Really, for such a big detective and all, you've not been doing much detecting into what's been going on right under your nose for the past few years, have you?”

He let his head cock slightly to one side. “Years, eh?”

“Years,” Valkyrie said, almost proudly, tossing her dark hair back. “It just took me this long to find out what would work, that's all.”

“Valkyrie, you were sleeping with my friends and making sure I saw you,” Skulduggery said drily. “What on earth was all that supposed to accomplish?”

“You've thought of me as a little girl for so long, I didn't know how else to make you see that I'm actually an adult,” she said, leaning her hip against the table. “I needed you to see that I'm all... grown up.”

Skulduggery looked away for a moment. “Did you tell them...”

“I never lied to anyone,” Valkyrie interrupted quickly. “I told them I wanted to have sex, just the once, just for fun, and that we'd be friends and everything after. I made sure they were all cool with it.”

“They're centuries older than you, Valkyrie. And I'm certain that even Vex wouldn't think one bout of sex, no matter how enthusiastic, was a promise of any sort.”

Valkyrie smiled at him. “Why do you think I didn't ask Fletcher? Like I said. I just wanted to get your attention.”

Skulduggery took one step closer to her. “And now you have it.”

“I want you,” Valkyrie said, her voice a little softer now. “I've wanted you for years and I saw how you looked at me when you found me with Dexter.”

“I don't look like anything; I don't even have eyes, for God's sake,” Skulduggery interjected. “How do you know I wasn't looking at him?”

Valkyrie grinned mischievously. “If you were, I'd be up for it. I could watch.”

Skulduggery shook his head in exasperation. “You young'uns. No shame, none.”

“No, I'm not ashamed,” Valkyrie agreed, stepping closer until they were barely two feet apart. “I don't know if you can love me, Skulduggery, but I'll take what I can get. And I know you find me attractive, if only when I'm naked and straddling someone.”

Just the words leaving her lips made Skulduggery's jaw clench. He was glad he didn't have skin; she would have seen his face twist with anger. He turned a little so he wasn't looking directly at her. “You were quite... demonstrative.”

“I wanted you to see what you were missing,” she admitted, stepping even closer. “What you could have, if you'd just allow yourself to take it.”

The skeleton gave a snort. “Well, there's taking and there's _taking_ , Valkyrie. What Vex, Rue and Shudder were doing, I most certainly cannot.”

Valkyrie tilted her head a little to one side, a gesture undoubtedly mined from a long acquaintance with Skulduggery. “You won't... you can't feel...”

“No,” he answered, “not really.”

Valkyrie let her eyes drop and looked away, shamefaced. It was quite clear she hadn't counted on his body being so much like any other skeleton. Her cheeks reddened, and Skulduggery saw her bite her lower lip. She folded her arms over her chest, and her shoulders slumped a little.

The feelings he had always had for his partner – affection, protectiveness, mild irritation – unfurled again in Skulduggery, and jealousy once more kicked him in his non-existent guts.

He placed a single finger underneath her chin and lifted her face until their eyes met. “But you can.”

Valkyrie's mouth opened ever so slightly. “I can? I mean, of course I can, but... With you?”

Skulduggery considered. “I suppose so. I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to bring these feelings out in you; I am a considerate lover. Or rather, I was. When I was alive. But you do know I am a skeleton, right?”

Valkyrie laughed a little. “No! Really? I would never have guessed!”

He shook his head a little. “Disrespectful. I meant, I am a skeleton from head to toe. I cannot... take you... like other men can.”

Valkyrie's eyes flashed. “I don't care. That's not why I want you. Skulduggery, I want your hands on me. I want your voice in my ear while I touch myself. I want to run my tongue over your jaw and see if you taste like magic, and I want -”

Skulduggery silenced her with a finger against her lips. “Don't. I can't listen to you say those things and remain standing here, calmly, without touching you.”

Valkyrie's hands went to the zip in her tunic. “I don't want you to stand there; I told you, I want you! I don't care about you being a skeleton, and besides...”

Words failed her when Skulduggery's hands were on hers, stopping her from opening her tunic again. Instead, she took one of his hands in her own, pulled off the glove, and pressed the white, skeletal hand against her breast, protective cloth the last barrier between them. Then she let her hands frame his face, and slowly pulled him closer.

She kissed the place where his mouth would be, and closed her eyes.

Skulduggery slowly slid his hands around her waist, making sure not to press her too close. He didn't know which he feared more; that he would bruise her in his ferocity, or that she would break him in hers. The heat around them was almost shimmering. They both wanted this far too much.

“Skulduggery,” she whispered against his bone-white grin, “please. I want you.”

He let her kiss and kiss and kiss his skull, the ridges around his eye sockets, his jaw, while he unzipped her tunic. He let her hands roam across his head, feeling the dry bone, then eased the tunic from her shoulders. When she was naked from the waist up, he lowered his head until he could nip gently at her breasts, gloriously bare and pale and swaying with her movements.

Valkyrie sighed happily and caressed his skull, arching into him, offering herself. Skulduggery barely caught a nipple between his teeth, pulled away slightly, toyed with her. She gave a little shudder and her hands tightened on his skull.

He could feel it. He could feel her touch on his bones and it felt... it felt good. He was stunned into inaction. He hadn't known this body could feel arousal, and she had proved him wrong. He had thought it would never feel pleasure, and yet...

There it was.

“Skulduggery?” she asked, hesitant, as his hands fell to her waist and he bowed his head. “What's wrong?”

“It seems I've been wrong about something for a very long time,” he said, voice hushed, “and it only took a touch of your hand to prove different.”

Valkyrie rolled her eyes. “Poetry isn't really my thing, Skulduggery, you know that. Just tell me.”

Emboldened by her lack of aversion to touching him, Skulduggery took her hand and placed it on his sternum, feeling the heat of her skin through his shirt. “I can feel... something. I'm not entirely sure what it is yet. But it seems these dry bones aren't actually... all dried up.”

Valkyrie's face lit up. “Really? I can... I can reciprocate? At least a little?”

“I don't think we should stay here for this conversation,” Skulduggery said, reluctantly pulling away from her. “I find myself wanting some privacy. Will you fly with me?”

Valkyrie Cain barely bothered to zip her tunic back up and grab her coat, then took his outstretched hand and followed him out of the room, through the Sanctuary, and finally outside. He put a hand around her waist, she clung to him, and he took them to Gordon's house.

When they landed, Valkyrie looked at him sideways. “Why not your place?”

“I'm going to make you come on the desk in Gordon's study,” Skulduggery growled. “And you will moan my name. Then I will take you to that function hall where you so obligingly climbed all over Rue, and I will make you scream it. And finally, when we are next in the Sanctuary for whatever reason, I will find that little room again and make you _beg_ to let you use my name.”

Valkyrie's breath left her. “Jealous, Pleasant?”

“You don't know the half of it,” Skulduggery said darkly, and pulled her towards the front door. “I'm surprised you haven't spoken to Saracen already. I had him at gunpoint, and only his silver tongue saved him from what would have been an unsightly hole in his forehead.”

The shiver that ran through her, reverberated in Skulduggery's hand.

“It's not just the jealousy,” he admitted, following her through the entrance door and waiting as she locked it. “It's the thought that they might not treat you well. That Valkyrie, _my Valkyrie_ , might be unhappy and hurt and I did not prevent it.”

She grinned to herself as she led the way up to the study.

“But really, mostly it's the jealousy,” he added as an afterthought. “I hate the thought that other men have had you.”

“They haven't,” she said dismissively. “I've had them, Skulduggery. Fletcher, Caelan, Saracen, Dexter, Anton, they were all fun for a while, like new toys. I used them: I let them come to me and I had fun with them. No one has ever had me, except you. You've always had me.”

“Undress,” Skulduggery said in a low, dangerous voice.

Valkyrie did. She dropped her tunic, removed her boots, peeled out of the trousers, and stood before her partner bared. She tossed her hair and waited for him to say something.

“Lie on the desk,” Skulduggery said, overwhelmed by the sight of her, and desperate to touch. “On your back.”

Again, she followed his orders, strangely meek and unprotesting. When she was lying back, she lifted herself onto her elbows and looked at him, biting her lip nervously. Skulduggery removed his hat, gloves, jacket and tie. He opened the two top buttons of his shirt, and rolled his sleeves up. Valkyrie's eyes followed his every move.

“Tell me the moment anything feels uncomfortable,” he decreed, and waited for her nod before placing his hands on her.

Valkyrie drew a shuddering breath. This was what she had been waiting for, what she had wanted, and she didn't dare make noise for fear of breaking this strange spell.

“Don't hold anything back,” Skulduggery muttered, sliding his bony hands up her ribs towards her breasts. “Remember, I mean to make you moan my name.”

Valkyrie writhed beneath his hands. He slid his fingers over her skin, up to her hair, and one of his phalanges became entangled in her dark locks. Leaving his hand there to burrow into her hair, Skulduggery moved his other hand to her breast, once more palming the soft flesh.

He could feel that it was soft, and he leaned down to nuzzle his skull against her chest. Valkyrie moaned and pushed up against him. Skulduggery slowly slid his hand further down her body, slipping it towards her hips and thighs. She shivered in his arms. He saw his white bones against her pale skin, saw his skeletal digits sweeping across her toned stomach, gently curving just above her pelvic bone, and wondered at how willing she was to be touched by him.

“Valkyrie,” he muttered, slowly running his fingers across her inner thigh. “How can you like this?”

“I like you,” she answered immediately. “I love your voice and your wit and your magic. I love that you've always let me fight with you.”

“But this,” he insisted, cupping her sex in his hand. She gasped. “Touching you. You're so alive, and I'm as dead as they come.”

“Skulduggery,” she whimpered, bucking her hips up to meet his hand. “Skulduggery, I want this. Touch me.”

He complied. His bony fingers were thinner and harder than his human ones had once been, but she was warm, and wet, and softly responsive beneath his hands. He slowly, gently, slid one finger into her, and she arched her neck. He rubbed her with his thumb while he slid one finger in and out, and she mewled. Actually mewled, like a pleased kitten, making soft noises in her throat.

Skulduggery felt the clingy heat between her legs and felt an urge to bury himself in her. If only he'd had flesh, if only he could –

But some things, he could still do.

Moving back up to lean his forehead against hers, he kept touching her, and watched her face contort with pleasure from his ministrations. She bucked her hips and he pushed another finger into her, watching her closely for any sign of discomfort. She only smiled at him and lifted her head to press a kiss against his teeth.

“Skulduggery,” she sighed. “More.”

He tugged gently at her hair and stroked her neck. Gently, ever so slowly, he pushed three fingers into her. She smiled up at him, and he felt a lurching sensation where his heart should have been. He rubbed harder at her nub, and Valkyrie tensed.

“Yes,” she breathed, “there. Right there. And talk. Please.”

“You want me to talk?” Skulduggery asked, buying himself time to think of what to say. “Do you want me to tell you how I want you, Valkyrie? You want me to admit how desperate I am to be flesh again, to be able to feel your body around mine?”

Her breath hitched and she clutched at him, her hands pulling him closer still.

“You must know you're mine now,” he growled, leaning in to bring his mouth closer to her ear. “I am not a good man, Valkyrie, and now that you've given yourself to me, I won't give you up. No other man touches you. No other man may have what is mine.”

She smiled beatifically at him. “No one else. Skulduggery!”

“Yes,” he hissed into her ear, sliding the hand that was under her head around her shoulders until he could pull her even closer. “My name, Valkyrie. Forget everyone else. Only mine.”

She gave a strangled groan as she arched, her legs coming up in a twitch as she came. Skulduggery could feel the almost rhythmic pulsing of her inner walls around his fingers, could feel her clench and pull on them. She gasped for breath and clung to him, her hands clawing at the back of his ribcage. He could feel it; the slight discomfort of her fingernails registered along with his pleasure in her climax, and he shuddered.

“Skulduggery,” she breathed, “wow.”

“You're happy, then?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual. “No regrets?”

“You're amazing, and you know it,” she said, looking up at him with a grin. “It's a miracle your ego hasn't inflated and carried you off like a helium balloon yet.”

He would have smiled if he had had lips.

“Now you,” she said eagerly, sitting up. “Can I take your shirt off?”

He hesitated. She had seen his detached limbs lying about before, helped him stick his leg back on and carried his skull around the countryside. But to let her undress him?

“Please,” she murmured, reaching out for him again. “I want to touch you. Tell me how.”

He shrugged. “I don't rightly know. I've not engaged in anything like this since I came back. It was only when you touched me that I discovered I feel something, after all. I do, however, suspect that I'll not like it if you damage any of the bones.”

“How about I start exploring, and you tell me what works and what doesn't?” Valkyrie murmured, a happy grin on her face. She met his eye sockets. “I'm sure I'll be amazing, too.”

“How could you be anything less, apprentice of mine?” he asked rhetorically, and got an eye roll for his troubles.

She unbuttoned his shirt, then left it open while she pushed his suspenders off his shoulders. Skulduggery felt embarrassment tug on his mind when his trousers merely dropped to the floor and he had to move out of her grasp to untie his shoes and step out of them with the trousers still around his ankle bones. Valkyrie, however, only laughed a little and reached for him again.

“That's so you,” she said, smiling. “Magical suspenders keeping your trousers up.”

“They're not actually magical,” Skulduggery muttered, moving into her arms again. “They're Bespoke.”

“Do you want to move to the couch?” she asked, looking up at him as she pushed his shirt from his shoulders. There was not a trace of discomfort or revulsion in her eyes as she took in his form.

“Let's,” he agreed, and took her hand to pull her with him over to the vast, old-fashioned leather couch at the other end of the study. “By the by, I'm sure that's called a divan.”

“It's called a surface, which is all I'm interested in right now,” Valkyrie said impatiently. “Come on.”

Then she stopped, looked at the couch, looked back at Skulduggery, and pursed her lips. “You've lifted me before, right?”

“Yes, and you were expectedly heavy.”

“Oh, shut up. Can I... sit on you? Would that hurt?”

“I shouldn't think so,” Skulduggery said carefully. “You want to...”

“Lie on your back, yourself,” she said with a snigger, and when he did, she quickly straddled him.

The skeleton detective was a little overwhelmed. Her legs, those strong legs he had seen around other men's waists, were now holding her weight off him, but only barely. He could see glimpses of dark pink flesh, glistening with her arousal, when she shifted her hips. And she looked down on him with pure joy on her face.

“This is brilliant,” she said, leaning down with a hand to either side of his ribs. “You're doing as you're told! You never do as you're told.”

“One might say the same about you,” he groused, but then she put her hands gently on his sternum and he fell quiet.

“Can I... will it hurt if I touch between the bones?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious but still eager.

“Try,” he invited her, steeling himself to feel as if he was being stabbed. He wasn't exactly in the habit of going about undressed, and he didn't poke about in his own bones. Perhaps he should have, to be prepared. But he had never dreamed of something like this.

She slid her fingers gently along one of his ribs, then allowed them to dip just barely between the bones. Skulduggery would have cried out if he hadn't been so busy drawing a breath he almost certainly didn't need.

“Are you okay?” she asked, stopping immediately.

It had felt electric. She was invading his body, his very bones; her fingers played his skeleton like a piano and every touch screamed through his entire being. It was an indescribable mixture of pain, exhilaration and glorious sensation. Skulduggery didn't know if he was alright, but he knew he wanted her to do it again.

“Again,” he heard himself croak, voice hoarse.

Valkyrie was as much a natural at this as she had been at Necromancy. She let her hands run over him, alternating between soft, pleasurable slides of her skin along his bones, and quick little touches to his very core. She kissed his grinning mouth while letting her breasts press against his cold ribs. She tickled the edge of his hip bone until he cried out and then pressed a finger between his jaw and neck. Skulduggery was reeling. He had never felt anything like it, and of course, how could he have? She had never touched him before.

“Skulduggery,” she whispered against his clavicle, “is this alright? Am I... is it good?”

“You're about to kill me,” he groaned, placing his hands over hers. “Don't stop.”

Valkyrie shifted her hips and began to slowly, gently, rub herself against the ridge of his pelvic bone. Her legs were quivering with the strain of holding herself up, and Skulduggery placed bony hands on her hips to ease her down on him.

“I won't break,” he growled.

“But I might,” Valkyrie gasped, sliding a little further back. “I'm not... totally in control of myself right now.”

She pushed him further, made his bones sing with sensation, made him want to fall apart in her hands. Just as he thought he could feel nothing quite as good as this, she scratched her nails down his ribs again and he swore he levitated, saw his bones beneath her flesh as he left himself for one glorious moment.

“Valkyrie,” he rasped, catching her hands in his. “Valkyrie.”

“You... did?” she asked, suddenly shy, and bit her lip. “Really?”

“Really,” he confirmed, pulling her down to lie on top of him. “And how.”

“Can you still...”

She wriggled against him. Had he had eyebrows, he would have arched them, but as it was, he simply slid his hands down her back and over her backside.

“Again?”

“If you wouldn't mind,” she said with a grin, then leaned in to lick at his jaw. “You know how it is with women and our superior physiology.”

“Insubordinate as always,” Skulduggery murmured, sliding his fingers between the soft folds of her sex. “Rebellious. Cheeky. Stubborn.”

“And all yours,” she gasped, pushing back against his fingers. “Skulduggery!”

She climaxed again by his fingers, by his hands, and she tried to choke back a moan as she crested. Skulduggery murmured in her ear that he wanted to hear her, that she mustn't hold back, and she finally gave in and cried out his name.

“Skulduggery!”

The skeleton detective slid his bony arms around her and held her close while she shuddered. His grin was, for once, an accurate representation of how he felt. And later, after he had taken Valkyrie to the function hall and made her scream his name, she was grinning just as widely as him, especially every time someone mentioned the Dead Men.

Skulduggery never caught her with another Dead Man again. And Valkyrie was very, very happy.


End file.
